Hello

    April 11, 2026

    This is a quiet blog where I document my journey to finish my first (not so first) novel. I write about things I like. Things that feel worth keeping. It won’t have a lot of content. Just small entries. Silent murmurs of someone trying to navigate the process of becoming an author.

    All photographs featured in this blog will be credited to their authors and linked back to their spaces. Some are my own. Especially those about coffee, writing, rainy days, scented candles, skincare, and my dog. And probably gardening. Definitely a lot of gardening.

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    Photo Credit by cottonbrostudio

    XVII: The Star

    May 5, 2026

    It’s been a tough week. Again.

    My father-in-law had a stroke, my mother-in-law broke her ankle. My dog had a stomach flu, and so did my kid. Work has been hell. The app deployment is still delayed, and now my user stories are under development, so it means I have QA on my ass all the time.

    But I did finish brainstorming the plotline and the main lore of the entire saga. And I felt very connected to the story. I enjoyed handwriting it a lot, but I think the downside is that, since I wrote a bunch of stuff with a tired hand and some glasses of wine, I’ll probably struggle to recognize what the fuck I wrote a few months from now. But well, that’s a problem for future me.

    I did have some anxiety and intrusive thoughts. “What if I never get published?” “What if all that awaits me are rejections?” “What if I can’t take the rejection and I just abandon my story?”

    My therapist, aka my girlfriends, told me that the chances of being picked up by an agent and getting published are very related to the market, and that doesn’t mean I’m a lousy writer. But still, I’ve been struggling. Because… what if this is only good in my mind? What if I’m the only person who thinks this is a good story?

    But then I thought about how good and right it feels to draw Emberfall on a napkin in the middle of a restaurant, how enjoyable it was when I wrote Duskenhold with an ink pen and stained my fingers, and then how good it felt when Gaya stepped in and Astra climbed the tower. So… well, let’s just keep going.

    It’s not over until I win.

    Apollonia

    May 5, 2026

    It’s 01:31 am. I’m drunk. And in crying over Apollonia. And now I can’t stop. Why did I have to write this? I could have gone with cozy fantasy but no, let’s do epic and have some real angst around the story. And now I can’t stop crying. Aaaaaaa why.

    Major Arcana: The Fool

    May 3, 2026

    The Fool symbolizes New Beginnings. I do want to write this down. I literally had the shittiest week. Something must have happened astrologically. I’ve heard I had an Aries stellium over me, like seven planets. And then I was in the query trenches, and work had been infernal, with the mobile app release delayed, and I had to rearrange the entire backlog around that. I wrote like 17 user stories and raised around 32 bugs.

    Anyway. I was super anxious this week. It was fun to be in QueryPit and all, but my nerves were all over the place.

    But today, I closed my computer, turned off my phone, and just sat quietly under the sun to write Book 2 arcs, plot, and everything that was on my mind. And I just… wrote down the entire saga. Book 3’s plot is almost done.

    My wrist hurts, and my handwriting was barely legible by the end of the day, but… I was so happy when I was doing it. It felt like fireworks of dopamine exploding in my brain. I just feel like telling everyone to go and write a book (or three), because it’s just so merry to do something like this. I can’t believe all the characters I’ve wrote, their stories, their feelings. Pierre still makes me cry everytime I read chapter 8, and I know I will cry a river when I get to write Apollonia. I’m just so lucky, so blessed.

    First Query

    April 28, 2026

    Finished my query package today and just queried an agent for the first time 🙂

    So it’s been a long week and a lot has happened. I finished the third edition, which, by the way, from edition 1 to edition 2, already had like 8 versions of the book. Cut down from 220K to 174K to 147K, I think, and somehow, I know it’s still too long and too bold for a debut, but I think the arcs are complete, and the whole worldbuilding and the plot are offering what a standalone book should have.

    So I decided it was a fair word count and gave it a shot. I still don’t know how this decision will be received, but I am confident the book has what it needs. Let’s see how the feedback goes, and if it is still very long… I will have to move to a fourth edition, maybe even a fifth.

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    The third edition is completed

    April 26, 2026

    I’m really bad at writing things that are only about me. I do feel my life has little things worth documenting, but sometimes writing about oneself can be really cringe; at least for me. So for this milestone, I’ve taken some “blogging advice” from Pinterest: ask some questions about this event, and the post would be the answers you provide.

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    Photo by Chris Harvey from Pexels

    Happy Birthday

    April 12, 2026

    I turned 40 today!

    Not major plans, just finishing the third edition of chapter 4. Which was a major accomplishment because I trimmed like 2K words. Then I was like… why put so much effort into it and then cut it out? But, very satisfied with how the chapter ended up.

    Plans for tomorrow’s celebration: get a new plant, a red fittonia perhaps, red as in Aries colors, dramatic as me. And a little one, so I get to have it on my desk and we grow and suffer from low water levels together. Then, dinner with my family. The new Racing Club’s team merch is coming up tomorrow, so surely, my husband will spend a fortune in buying the new goods. Perfect excuse to get something to myself too.

    Also did something never done before: a video of myself talking about the book. Well, a video of myself talking about anything, actually. It felt good. I’ve never recorded myself, and… it wasn’t cringe. Now will I ever upload it? Meh… maybe?

    Maybe next year. I can’t stand seeing my own face or hearing my own voice. Sounds a little like torture still.